"British soldiers in Afghanistan are engaged in fighting that is more intense and prolonged than any other conflict during the past 50 years, the British commander of all foreign troops in Afghanistan warned yesterday.

Some British soldiers will be withdrawn from the dangerous region of southern Afghanistan where they have engaged in a series of bloody battles with Taliban fighters, Lieutenant General David Richards told the BBC. He said the British soldiers would be replaced by Afghans.

"This sort of thing hasn't really happened so consistently, I don't think, since the Korean war or the second world war," Gen Richards, Nato's commander in Afghanistan said. "It happened for periods in the Falklands, obviously, and it happened for short periods in the Gulf on both occasions. But this is persistent low-level dirty fighting."

As a result, British soldiers were enduring "days and days of intense fighting, being woken up by yet another attack, and they haven't slept for 24 hours", he said.

Ten British soldiers have been killed in clashes with Taliban fighters and their supporters in the Sangin valley"

the population there. It was all about re-establishing the opium trade and putting in that pipeline. Notice how little the new Afghanistan has developed? I am waiting for the Talibanners to acquire more sophisticated weapons to arrive then being able to down our jets, helicopters and blow up bases. Then what will bushco do?

What do you call spreading carcinogenic and birth-defect inducing depleted uranium dust around the enemy's territory?

More recently, Bush's and the Pentagon's reassurances were vigorously challenged by nuclear physicists and physicians at a scientific meeting, the World DU/Uranium Weapons Conference held in Hamburg, Germany during October 2003. New data suggest that orders of magnitude more Americans and Iraqis may have been poisoned by uranium from depleted uranium (DU) weapons explosions than Kurds had been killed by Saddam's gas in 1988. Review in Hamburg of the long term medical effects from DU exposures during the 1990s in Kosovo, Sarajevo, southern Iraq and from American veterans of the Gulf War reveal a frightening reality.

Conference scientists criticized as decades obsolete the Pentagon models used for reassuring the public about the long-term effects of inhaling uranium oxide particles from DU weapons. Citing the Pentagon model, the official 2003 Conference Statement concluded: "The knowledge on which this model is based is faulty and outdated. This is like comparing sitting in front of a fire with eating a hot coal."

According to the Conference, the mobility of the ceramic uranium oxide particles from DU weapons explosions is due to their re-suspension in dry weather. Measuring isotope ratios of U-238 and Pa-234m/Th-234 in water and air measurements by UNEP in Kosovo, Bosnia and Montenegro has showed this. Uranium oxide particles are available for inhalation long after the war is over. Anyone in the general area of their prior use is at risk, several years after their use or contamination. This had been proven by urine measurements in Kosovo in 2001. All of the people sampled showed contamination from DU. This was also shown by urine tests of Gulf War veterans made 10 years after their exposure.

4. Can't fight the war on terror and the war on drugs at the same time

I read in a British paper a week ago that the problem in Afghanistan is that poppy farmers have been impoverished by the US's ridiculous war on drugs, so they have thrown their lot with the Taliban. A British officer was quoted as saying that America needed to choose between the war on terror or the war on drugs, but that it couldn't do both at the same time.

"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier."The Young British Soldier

I think the population of Afghanistan sort of put up with us for a while, since they figured the invasion was "tit for tat" due to their giving Bin Laden refuge. But now they figure the blood debt is paid, and we should get the hell out and let them settle their civil war themselves. They don't like invaders getting too comfortable.

We removed the Taliban but failed to secure the countryside, and have allowed the warlords to again take over. Just like last time, the people will welcome the return of the Taliban to give them some protection from the warlords.

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